Biography

Matt Bodah is Vice Provost for Academic Personnel and Budget.  His responsibilities include, among others, participating in negotiations and administering contracts for the full- and part-time faculty and graduate assistants’ unions, overseeing salary negotiations and start-up packages for newly hired faculty, coordinating sabbatical leaves, and taking part in budget allocation decisions.  

He joined URI as a faculty member in the Schmidt Labor Research Center in 1992.  From 2009 through 2014 he served as chair of the Department of Economics. In 2016, he was assigned to lead the University’s institutional self-study as part of its decennial reaccreditation by the New England Commission on Higher Education.  He was appointed an interim vice provost in May, 2017 and has held the position on a continuing basis since July, 2018.  

During his time as a faculty member, he taught courses and conducted research in the areas of labor relations and human resources.  His work has appeared in numerous academic and practitioner journals, including Industrial Relations, Journal of Labor Research, Labor Studies Journal, Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal, and Dispute Resolution Journal.  His co-edited volume (with Karen Roberts and John Burton) Workplace Injuries and Diseases:  Prevention and Compensation was recognized as a notable book in industrial relations by the Princeton University library.  He taught courses in collective bargaining, compensation administration, and industrial sociology.   

Before his appointment as vice provost, he also maintained a practice as a labor arbitrator and mediator.  He was inducted into the RI Labor History Society Hall of Fame in 2015 and received Providence College’s Reverend Charles B. Quirk Award for outstanding contributions to the cause of industrial peace in 2011.  In 2012, he received the Administrative Excellence Award from the College of Arts and Science. He has held elected and appointed positions in the Labor and Employment Relations Association at both the national and local levels.  He is a graduate of Providence College, the University of Rhode Island, and Michigan State University where he earned a doctorate in the social sciences with a specialization in labor and industrial relations.